circinus galaxy – Secrets of Space https://secretsofspace.com Exploring planets, stars, galaxies, astronomy, the universe and space secrets Tue, 13 Oct 2020 22:42:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.2 Black Holes of the Circinus Galaxy https://secretsofspace.com/black-holes-of-the-circinus-galaxy/ Sun, 27 Apr 2014 14:00:00 +0000 http://secretsofspace.com/?p=388 Continue reading Black Holes of the Circinus Galaxy →]]> Picture of black holes in the Circinus Galaxy taken by NASA/JPL-Caltech's NuSTAR mission
Picture of black holes in the Circinus Galaxy taken by NASA/JPL-Caltech’s NuSTAR mission

The two purple/magenta coloured spots in this picture show a massive black hole in the center of the Circinus Galaxy and a smaller black hole beside it. The smaller black hole belongs to a class called ultraluminous X-ray sources, or ULXs. It was what lead to this discovery, where the larger black hole is believed to be around one hundred times the size of our Sun. The Circinus galaxy is located about 13 million light years away from Earth in the Circinus constellation.

The X-ray data came from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescopic Array (NuSTAR) mission managed by JPL-Caltech.

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